Scene #5798: [E]mergent Intelligence

Owner	Pose
A2	There's only one leg of this operation left. With lost contact with the Resistance in the area thankfully only being a matter of damaged and difficult to replace equipment, and the missing YoRHa handler less-thankfully turning up dead bizarrely deep in the desert/crater/old apartments, all that's left to wrap up is determining why the hell she was out here and what she was doing. YoRHa themselves claim they don't know, and despite all the blindfolds and eerily identical ladies, it's believable for two reasons. One is that the handler dropped off the radar between scheduled updates rather than right as she left, and nobody knew she was gone for weeks. Two is that YoRHa doesn't send anything like a suspiciously heavily armed recovery or search and destroy team. The Elites meet up with just one, and he looks fourteen at the oldest. Near what probably constitutes ground zero, so ancient that it has long ago become a Saraha-esque sea of flowing golden dunes surrounded by high rocky mesas, they're lead to meet fairly close to the old ruins before. That is, the newer old ruins, not the older old ruins. That is the ruins made of ancient stone pillars and arches, not the ruins made of futuristic mile high skyscrapers. Whatever. The point is that it's close to the place they were last, it's hot as all hell, the weird sand is still a gritty slip'n'slide, and the agent waiting for them is a barely pubescent boy with short, dark hair, wearing an incredibly formal suit-and-tie, if not even slightly military by the buttons and collar, take on sleeves&shorts. He too is wearing the same inexplicable black blindfold, and salutes with the left hand when they arrive, though he seems far less formal about it than the pale and blonde command staff. "Hey there. I'm 4S, your assigned liaison for the last part of this mission. Getting up and down from the Bunker is expensive you know, so would you mind showing me where you found 13O? Command is a little reluctant to restore her from backup until we can rule out any possibility of corruption or viral contamination."
All-Seeing Eye	All-Seeing Eye returns the salute, smiling cordially at 4S. "4S?" He repeats the name, tilting his head slightly to make sure he got it right (largely as a courtesy). Any sign of confirmation from the liaison results in a half-bow, Eye's beige canvas poncho hanging low for a moment. "Pleased to meet you," says the Exalt as he rises. Stepping around 4S, he stands beside the young man and points with a hand to the aforementioned location. "13O was found within that structure," he says as the wind toys with his hair. "She had been stripped down to her endoskeleton, and was surrounded by Machines in some sort of idle state, performing menial tasks simply for the sake of performing them." Touching a finger to his lips, he pauses, pondering that memory with a thoughtful frown. "Seemingly more as a ritual than for any real reason." With a soft, nonplussed hum, he shrugs his shoulders. "Whatever their motivation, their internal memory is decentralized and erased at short, regular intervals." The Alchemical's lips curl upwards into a hint of a smile. "While we have no doubt the Machines stripped her for parts, we have no proof it was they who killed her." There might be just a hint of insinuation in that tone, but he lets the remark linger only for a moment before looking 4S in the eye and posing a question in a more friendly, conversational tone. His face suddenly alight with interest, brows raised, "Tell me, 4S. Is there any... historical significance to this place? To the ruins built in the midst of older ruins?" A casual gesture backwards, to the new ruins. "Any reasons you might think of why Machines would take up residence here to enact little passion plays, acting at being human?"
Kyoko Takada	Alpha-39 is here, having shown up once more in the hope of finding useful salvage. Some days, she does. Other days, she gets run off by giant armies, or there's crap to work with. It's felt like an unfair dice roll, recently, but she at least has one other motivation in showing up here, on this world: Seeing that nobody else fucks things up in a way that affects the one murderbot she kind of likes. That part's a secret to most people who aren't August. "Alpha-Three-Nine," she introduces herself. "No relation." Glancing either way over the sands, she checks her gear and camo for the third redundant time. Everything secured. The footing's not great, but she still trusts her own feet more than other people's vehicles. "This way. Found her remains with a bunch of machines. They were taking her apart, but you can't tell whether she was alive when they found her. They're the yellow-eye type. Didn't seem to care when we walked in. Might care when you do. Guess we'll find out."
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone entered without much fuss to meet up with 4S, she raises an eyebrow at how hold they appear but well givne her last visit here she's got some ideas anf will not preusme apprent age is an factor on anything. She's glad in stealth gear and carrying some sort of SMG across her back and a matter maniplator on her hip. She seems chipper enough and has bright teal hair to go with everything else. "Kotone Yamakawa." Sand, so much sand, maitnance was going to be hell after this op but there was little she could do about it she mused to herself. She looks to All-seeing Eye for a moment. "How out of the norma is it for the machines to do something like this 4S?"
Mei Hatsume	"Viral contamination? Who would even be able to do that here? Those machines didn't look like the sort that could do that, but maybe..." Mei's tone is a curious one as she slides down the sand carefully, long spikes popping out of her harness every now and then to stab into the sand. She's keeping herself balanced well enough between the spikes and her own actual balance, although her attention is less on maneuvering and more on the group's liaison. "Does sound convenient to be able to just do that, though. This restoration process... Is it actually going to be her, or is it some sort of copy? Will she know what happened after restoration?" She's understandably curious about the whole procedure, but speaking and trying not to bite her own tongue in between random slips and jerks is making it harder to speak! At least the directions are simple enough, and she finally remembers to add in a quick "Mei Hatsume!" and a broad grin in introduction at the end.
Starbound Flotilla	"What's up, short stuff?" George has his helmet down at the moment, because the YoRHa people are all about humans so he should at least display his human...like look. "Yeah, you guys are still using fuel-based surface-orbit transit, right? No space elevators or orbital mass accelerators or nothin'. Well, I won't waste all your carbon, let's hit the tracks." "4S. A pleasure. I am Haruto, Moonfin of the Hylotl and Captain of the Starbound Flotilla." Moonfin bows deeply at him, and then gestures towards the city region. "This group found a clear passage to the underground regions where the construction was underway during our last visit. One of our own may be in the process of her own efforts, we have not been monitoring such matters intensely. Please give her some wide berth if her work is still underway." Speaking of Pavo, she's been trying to keep up relations -- by which I mean trying to provoke cultish reverence -- with the machine lifeforms down below. Whether she's had any real opportunity to stay down there depends entirely on a unique intersection of circumstances, timing, and improbable non-interference from All-Seeing Eye, but depending on all those factors, she might have a better idea of what the machines have been doing in the days since the end of the last mission here.
Batou	Batou isn't thrown by the age of the child, since he knows that these aren't humans... not really, anyway... He nods to 4S, and then listens on as Eye goes on his spiel. He lets out a slight yawn, and then chimes in himself. "Eye, these ruins are beyond ancient, I don't really see what secrets they could hold... But, I do think those droids killed her, considering their... demeanor? Little bastards." He sighs as Tachikoma comes up behind, spinning around to open its hold. Within is held two large, heavy blades found from a cache in the ruins of the fertile city. "Pardon me, 4S, but would you happen to know anything about these blades? We found them earlier near the fort!" Batou grunts, as he had pretty much forgotten them until now. "Hey! Good idea, Tachikoma! Bet you remembered due to their weight." Batou hefts them out, setting them in the sand as he present them. "Any idea what these are?"
August Kohler	August had been there at the Bunker months before when the mission details were first offered, and had wished he could have gotten more involved. A-39 had been there in his stead, luckily, so there had been someone loyal to A2, but now that he actually had the freedom to make it, the redhead was present. Dressed in a t-shirt with a coat tied around his waist, a gun and a knife at his side, and a mirrored bracelet on his wrist. For him, this was 'well-armed'. The knowledge that the handler is dead is oddly reassuring to August, because it means that YoRHa gets a setback. He didn't know everything about YoRHa, but he trusted A2 that they were the enemy wholeheartedly. As 4S shows himself, August is cagey, looking him in the eyes for a few moments and analyzing the android boy to get an idea if he looks dangerous. "August Kohler." Is all he says, letting the others do most of the talking. August has some questions himself, after all. "So, what, the machines are playing at human? The hell would they do that for?" Angled at the majority of the group, before a question to 4S. "What is YoRHa planning on doing with the information so far? Check the body and recover it for information?" An idea of what might happen would help him figure out what his goal here is, after all.
Ezekiel Gravez	Zeke tippied his hat and didn't say anything. Eye and the others were already asking the relevant questions. The more he sees all these humanity personified machines, the more he is surprised by them, and their behaviours. There is a part of him that remembers the tail end of the story of MICEE-5 back on Rubi-ka. How a machine went from being an experimental Juggernaught AI, to a self aware thinking thing. The shape of the thing seems to matter little, more-so the content of their self programming. All-Seeing Eye represented even a deeper point on the spectrum, and he had been studying that creature every chance he could. With the handler no longer functioning, his mind wandered with options - the easiest of which would be to rebuild it; but the extent of the deconstruction seemed like time wasted. Zeke continued the to monitor his network of analysis. There has to be more going on here than what meets a casual glance.
A2	"That's right." is mostly 4S just what 4S says when a couple of people ask for confirmation. "That's . . . weird. No, I can't say I've heard of anything like that. Not specifically anyway. We've been getting more and more reports recently of those 'yellow eye types' like you put it. Machines totally disconnected from the server." He starts walking as people point him towards the right structure. "You're right that their intelligence is decentralized. No individual machine is smart enough to do much more than walk around and repeat their last orders. They're usually more like 'shells' for the network to iterate into. Sure, data gets copied and saved on them so the other units can be tweaked to adapt to changes in the war, but it's not like they have brains, never mind goals or personalities. I don't know why they'd act like /humans/. Even if they were cut off and just acting on programming, there's no reason the Machine network would order them to act that way, even if it wasn't programmed to kill humans." He sounds pretty earnest about it, having no reason to believe he's being lied to, but concerned and curious at the same time. "Taking Androids apart is normal behaviour at least. YoRHa models especially use a lot of high end parts and refined components made in microgravity which the Machines can't match with their limited ability to innovate. They'll cannibalize anything useful and solder it to new units, until that unit is destroyed and it falls back into someone's hands. Salvage missions aren't usually just for screws and wires. There are Machines all over with advanced equipment stuck in them somewhere." He takes a minute to examine the swords Batou lugs out, though he doesn't actually touch them. "These are standard issue. Emergency backup weapons mostly. You know, if a flight unit crashes or a stealth unit gets caught. 13O is an intelligence operative though, she'd be basically unarmed if she didn't take these. Damn." When he finally does touch them, the swords fizzle like images on a dying TV screen and abruptly pop into so much static, becoming glitchy-looking translucent orbs that fly up 4S' sleeve. Arriving at the darkened passage, 4S stops for a second, frowning mildly, before touching his communicator, and saying only "Pod." A few seconds later, what can really only be described as a gunmetal grey box, about the shape of a refrigerator but the size of a football, flies quietly up from over the next dune. Two stubby manipulator arms are mounted on its underside, and some sort of radio transmitter is on its top, but otherwise the floating doohickey is as incredibly simplistic as it can be. "Pod 053 is available. If YoRHa Unit 4S has completed his rendezvous obligations, this Pod unit will resume assistive duties." says the Pod. Like everything else in this world, it too is a robot, though its voice is flat, polite, and blatantly artificial, compared to the extremely human tones of Androids, or the broken and tinny uncanny valley of the rare times Machines vocalize. "We're going inside. Set passive sensors to maximum and turn on a light would you?" "Affirmative."
A2	The Pod switches on some sort of mounted flood light when 4S steps into the corridor, and then bizarrely picks up the slack in the conversation. "Affirmative. All pre-existing orbital transport infrastructure was destroyed in the first Machine War. All subsequent attempts to build permanent launch infrastructure have failed as well." he(?) says to George. "YoRHa Unit 13O will be formatted to exact specification as data completeness allows. It is probable she will retain all memories up to the time she had ceased functioning, providing no memory corruption exists. I do not perceive any further relevance to that query." "You'd be surprised." 4S says to Mei as well though, more than a little grimly. "The Machines have been better at e-warfare basically forever. Designer logic viruses wiped out most of the Android population of Earth way back in the early days, and they keep coming up with new ones. Even the earliest YoRHa prototypes were partly killed by logic viruses, though the full production models like myself are immune." Not a whole lot has changed on the way in. The place is still so old that anything not made of solid metal or stone has long since turned to dust, and thus all of the furniture is utterly ancient iron or cobbled together scrap. It's completely pitch black, save the last intersection where torches are mysteriously lit, meaning they've been replaced several times somehow since they were last seen. The room beyond has undergone quite the extensive overhaul though. Most of the Machines had been oddly absent the past couple of weeks for Pavo bothering to check up on them, but just yesterday the entire workshop chamber had found itself covered wall to wall in elaborate chalk drawings that are half blueprint and half mesoamerican artwork, and the coal forge has been replaced with a rusty industrial furnace. Stubby biped Machines in shitty attempts at aprons and goggles crowd around a large hole excavated in the floor, chanting in monotone as they wobble around the room, hauling in carved rocks and urban scrap that they continue welding a pile that fills up the entire, otherwise empty shaft. It looks kind of like they're just jamming stuff that seems useful into a pit and TIG welding it, while the other half of the shop remains frantically scrabbling at the walls. The digital map 13O had out has been faithfully replicated in the exact spot it was projected on as well. "What the . . . what the /hell/ is this?!" 4S asks. "Unknown. Nature of Machine activities is undetermined." adds Pod 053 unhelpfully.
All-Seeing Eye	"More or less the same as we found them," Eye remarks after the Pod's analysis. He observes the drawings on the wall--particularly those with Mesoamerican influences--and, without turning to look at her, compares them with Pavo's attire and effects. Nothing more than a brief, cursory examination, meant to find basic similarities, what would amount to a passing glance for most. Any in-depth analysis will have to wait. "Watch this," he says to 4S. Just as he did on the previous outing here, Eye snaps his fingers, raising his hand above eye level for the machines to see. "You," he says, nodding to the first one his gesture attracts. "Come." A backwards nod of his head. Lowering his hand, he gives another directive. This might work, it might not--but, he's guessing they behave somewhat similarly to Autochthonian automatons, so, who knows? Last time, at least, the 'come here' trick worked, so even if it's just that, it should be something for 4S to take back to YoRHa. "Starting from earliest intact memory file, list all command directives up to current timestamp."
Kyoko Takada	"Nah," Alpha-39 says, in mild contradiction to All-Seeing Eye. "I think they've gotten even weirder." She takes the chance, dropping her mask and sensors into place, to take a closer look at that gathered construction filling the shaft, trying to find either what it's for, or whether there's anything useful she can cut back off of it.
Batou	Batou is actually suprised this time by the blades simply disappearing into orbs, taking a step back. "Heh, now that's pretty advanced," mumbles, slightly disappointed that his find was so quickly disappeared from him. Tachikoma and Batou make their way down with the rest of the group, looking over the Mesoamerican drawings, considering how similar they look to the well-known drawings back home. "Tachikoma, go investigate that tunnel. But be careful," orders Batou. "Roger!" chimes Tachikoma as it makes its way into the build site, using its climbing skills to cling to the wall of the shaft and begin investigating further the... contraption inside. Just /what/ is this thing, anyway? Only one way to find out.
August Kohler	August watches the pod come out with curiosity, but doesn't speak more. The fact that they plan on bringing this android back...hm. That information might be of benefit, but August can't figure out how they'd get it. The machines themselves are weird and fascinating. Since A-39's handling the contraption, August notices All-Seeing Eye talking to one of the machines and heads up to one of his own. Perhaps he'll try to ask a question himself. "Machine. Primary objectives?"
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa confers with Batou and Eye on the Paladin's com for a moment, while she listens to what $S has to say, the joys of being a cyborg for multitasking. "So units cut off and behaving on their own? "We're dealing with machines made by non humans right? Who knows what their minds are like or function but with your people's experiences with them? Humm I presume it's too dangerous to try and to hack into one of these things to see what I might be able to pull off them?" She gets some more information that the machines will take advanced tech from fallen YoRHA soldiers. Grizzly to her, yet she sees the logic in their actions at doing that. She watches the blade end up just going poof at 4S's hands. She keeps moving though as they move on. She pulls out a hand held flashlight, kind of odd for how much hardware. At 4S's words about the machines skill at E-warfare she grimaces and reiplies to it. "So don't plug my brain into anything got it." She'll have to keep ready to go autistic mode to shut down all her outside connections if it comes to it. He flashlight peers into the gloom and then she sees the forge. "Wait are they trying to forge something?!" What the heck was going on here? Is this some kind of blacksmith shop?!" Kotone will get a good look at the plans/art to record it for later use by those who have been looking into this. She then watches All-Seening eye go to ahem jack in but he is an exalt so there's magic involved so who knows what might effect him or not.
Starbound Flotilla	"This," Pavo is here in her mesoamerican armor still, and she gestures at the walls. "Is what they were doing before. It looks like a map your doll found before she passed on for judgment. She had it on her storage and was doing something with it before she died. These machines took to it like maggots to corpses." She plants her feathered hands on her hips and regards it. "Looks important enough to revert back to the behavior. They're devoted, which is good if I can find a way to get them to properly devote in the right way." She zips over to the party, leaning over 4S's shoulder in an in-your-personal-space kind of way, as if she could use the smaller YoRHa android like one of those paid telescopes. "This looks familiar to you? Any recognition of the design and the layout? Because it sure was important to the dead lady, and I sure don't have any of the tech to breach that black box and figure out /why/ it was something that made such a big impression on a YoRHa droid and a Machine Lifeform group and got both of 'em so /devoted/."
Mei Hatsume	The pod. That's going to hold Mei's attention for a good while. Whether that's a good or bad thing is questionable since she's tracking it like a hawk, but at least she's not running around touching everything and potentially runing any evidence that was left behind with those odd drawings. "More advanced voice modulation... Ah? Designer logic viruses would... Hm. That's a little outside of my specialty, but I wouldn't have guessed that was the case based on the machines we've seen so far." She's half tempted to reach out and touch Pod 053, but she settles for simply staring and using her Zoom Quirk to stare at it telescopically instead. "If the Machines have been able to stay ahead of you YoRHas, though, then... Do you have any backups in place just in case they've corrupted you into thinking you're not corrupted?" The curious tone in her voice lingers, and it takes quite a lot of willpower just to tear herself away from staring at the Pod to finally INVESTIGATING. Mostly by staring at the machines drawing on the walls. She steps closer to try and make heads or tails of it all, and even peeks at the machines themselves every now and then to see if there's any rhyme or reason to how they're doing it.
A2	Pod 053 either doesn't pay attention to Mei, or is keeping his opinion politely to himself. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot to look at on him. Almost everything is completely contained beneath the geometric, totally unadorned casing, and there are no visible propulsion or sensory devices at all. He just kinda bobs along at a perfectly fixed distance from 4S' shoulder. "The core personality data of YoRHa units are routinely inspected at regular intervals and upon every remote upload to ensure data integrity. Even if it were possible for a YoRHa unit to experience severe data corruption without being alerted, many automated systems with multiple steps of removal from unit personality data are able to catch a personality aberration." he then finally gives out to her. The drawings on the walls are an absolute mess. While they certainly have a lot of obviously mathematical designs and principles behind them, they get so absurdly dense that it's a wonder if anyone could make anything intelligible with a laser at that size, never mind a stick of chalk. The other half of it just appears to be pure artwork, near-identical to Pavo's ostentatious gear, albeit shot through with tangents and cosines everywhere. The map is the only recognizable thing in the room, which 4S immediately begins scanning and recording, his frown deepening. "It looks like some kind of . . . power grid. Like a huge energy source buried somewhere around here. Not /here/ here, but this is the closest place underground. I don't like it. If this is what those Machines drew, then they could have done anything to change it from the original." Pod 053 adds "There is a high probability that these coordinates correspond to a high density of Machine Lifeforms, whether incidental as a matter of construction, or as an intentional trap. Reporting intelligence to YoRHa command would be wise." One particular Machine whirring and waddling around with what looks like a piece of fibre optic cabling stops in its tracks at the summons, tottering around until it faces All-Seeing Eye and August, stuttering in its creepy microphone-in-a-bucket doll 'voice': "DIRECTIVES. BUILD MOUNTAINS TO GODS. FORGE WEAPONS OF GODS. DRAW DESIGNS OF GODS. OBJECTIVE. DIVINITY. REACH DIVINITY." It's complete nonsense, absolutely not what it had said last time, and also oddly more elaborate sentence structure than before, in that it can manage more than one word at a time. That's a little odd.
A2	So is the giant heap they're working on, halfway embedded in the floor. When people approach to inspect it, they can get a general sense of where it's attached. Metalwork appears to exist both underneath and running through blocks of stone from the surrounding ruins, put on it like a 'jacket' or insulation, but those useless Machines with the chisels from before have apparently become extremely good at reproducing Pavo's artwork. It gets even much more unusual when the scrap heap, shifts, rumbles, and then booms out with all the tone of a fog horn in an empty oil drum: "DIVINE. DIVINE. I AM DIVINE." The chamber immediately begins shaking from its foundations as the giant project begins churning in its silo, shifting and rotating until it manages to get itself upright, and then reveal what appears to be a head, no larger or less spherical than any head that could have come from any of the other Machines, but installed in a train car-sized body of roughly humanoid proportions, wearing elaborately carved stone blocks as faux armour, with torches still mounted on them, such that little flames pop up all over its body when it begins moving. It clumsily reaches one gigantic hand out of the pit towards the Alchemical and August, scraping the giant appendage over the floor. "NONBELIEVER. SMITE. NONBELIEVER." When it realizes it can't reach them from its partially assembled position, instead a number of stone blocks embedded with red gems adeptly flip back and expose cannons, which start blasting up the front of the room with what amount to energy cannonballs. The other Machines don't scramble away or drop what they're doing. They actually crowd around it, continuing to weld on new pieces even while it starts shooting, chanting: "HE IS CHOSEN. HE IS CHOSEN. WE WILL BECOME DIVINE."
August Kohler	Well, that's a horrifying response. Reach divinity? "What the actual fuck?" Is all August can make out...as the giant scrap heap starts to move and everything starts shaking. As the 'god' rises, August stumbles back, almost falls flat, and forces himself against a wall, pulling the mirrored bracelet up to eye-level as it tries and fails to grab him with a giant hand. "Persona!" In a flash of blue energy, a burn-scarred robot soldier with a rifle for a leg appears, right in time to get blasted backwards into August by an energy cannonball, causing a heavy groan. And then, it moves forward, raises its gun-leg up, and starts firing, specifically at the cannons on the backs. August is attempting to cripple its firepower, with the usage of both bullets and actual fire. "You think you're divine? You're just a pile of scrap and stone that's gotten in over its head! Take this, you piece of shit!"
Kyoko Takada	The fact that she was the one looking to tear things off but the Alchemical and-slash-or her comrade are the ones targeted as "nonbelievers" is not lost on Alpha-39. She swallows a curse, reflexively shouting the more constructive "Fall back!" while not following her own advice. No, she ducks straight in, half-diving to the ground and slide-kicking smaller machines out of the way in the same motion as drawing a blade and flicking the switch to set it humming with incandescent energy. Ignoring the opportunity to criticize an apparently broken machine collective's understandings of religion, she instead strikes for the physical supports, trying to either drop the plus-sized machine further into the pit or have it fall backwards and off-balance. She's still hoping to get some useful hardware out of this.
Mei Hatsume	"Precautions and a lot of redundancy... Slow, but if it works, then why not?" Her curiosity about the restoration process sated for the time being, Mei's able to glean that the drawings are... Indecipherable. She can barely make out some of the work they're doing as being math-related, but there's only so much she can figure out with just a solid wall of figures and not actually working anything out herself. She lets out an irritated grunt, the steps back to listen to the Pod's analysis and the Machine's statement of their plan. Also, righting herself when the room begins to echo with noise and shake with movement. "He-llo there~! Oh, you're a big one, aren't you?" Her eyes widen in excitement as the giant reveals itself, not looking frightened in the slightest even as it opens fire on the group. She starts running /towards/ the shots, twisting and sliding and launching herself sideways with her harness's spikes to avoid taking a blast to the face all in the name of getting evenc loser to the giant. "So inefficient, but being able to repurpose and use things seamlessly... Who made you?!" Mei's even starting to cackle a little while an energy cannonball grazes past her arm, but the pain is secondary to her task of climbing the 'god' and getting a closer look at how it's all been put together.
All-Seeing Eye	"I see." The Exalt leaps backwards, retreating by means of a graceful backflip, his hands touching upon the floor in order to push him further backwards and right himself. As he rises, a steel cable snakes free of his sleeve, lashing out laterally before him with a crack of lightning. The whip scrapes against the stone floor with a shower of white-hot sparks, and is soon joined by another. With both arms in motion, he makes use of his supernatural martial art to redirect the energy blasts--not towards the robot, but towards its worshippers. Towards Pavo's pet project. Crossbow bolts zip outwards from his wrists like angry hornets, weaving between his flailing whips, bouncing off of the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and even the machine heresy itself, all directed towards the crowd of misshapen supplicants. The goal is twofold: to disable the aid the false god receives from its worshippers, and to make an example of them before Pavo. One energy blast makes it through his net, forcing him to roll sideways. In the midst of this maneuver, he locks eyes with Pavo. His face is entirely bereft of the amusement she seems to find in the situation.
Ezekiel Gravez	Zeke snaps his attention to the sounds of the chanting. His right hand goes right to the handle of The Patriot, as his eyes focus upon the hand as it moves. When it fires he quickly stands up and starts to size up the room with purpose. "What the..?" DIVINE. I AM DIVINE. WE WILL BECOME DIVINE. Oh HELL no! With leonine prowess, the Nanotechnician dive-retreats behind a ruined wall. With his back to it, he speaks to himself just above a whisper: "Entropy." The cyberdeck lights up, forming mathematical equations for splitting energy and matter. The needle like projection extends and begins to resonate with frequency. The very air begins to hum and throb as the gunslinger comes from behind cover. "Incoming!" He cries out as an azure blue technicolour beam strikes the creature one of the artillery firing mits. There is a deep thrumbing soundwave as the lightshow from the nano nuke as the energies pound and penetrate the massive automaton, and then retreat to ground out over the room. Hexagonal panels laden with mathematical symbols fly about in spectral patterns before settling into various positions near people before starting to form into a solid of some kind. These panels will appear similar to the one that Zeke used to protect himself with. Hopefully, it'll bait the giant while his companions can get cover.
Starbound Flotilla	"Wow, okay, so maybe can you /stop/ this thing you started?" "No, no no! You can't stop this sort of thing once they understand!" "Ah, you are in one of these moods again." "You're damn right I am!" Pavo leaps forward, seemingly intending to... "negotiate", in a sense. By which I mean she intends to immediately engage with their warped and twisted mentality. "Ahoy!" She shouts. "God among machines! True divine! I'm gladdened! I'm gladdened to see your ascent to divinity! I'm gladdened to see your transcencend from mortality! Look! The power to smite! The strength to defy mortality! The mountain of steel! The weapons of divine light! The designs of the heavens!" She has maneuvered to the one side, and then plants some sort of heavy pre-loaded terrain system straight into the ground, projecting columns of shimmering light and strange, elaborately-carved stone throughout the chamber. "Now your believers are threatened -- so now you can prove to them! You can make their beliefs real! You can protect them, to make them know their beliefs were right!" Her terrain ought to provide them cover. This is escalating very inevitably towards direct combat between All-Seeing Eye and Pavo, but that may come later. "The heretical nonbelievers and diabolical anathema can try, but they're an opportunity to show that aspect of divinity!" She calls out to the worshipping machines, and to the main "godhead". "PRAY FOR PROTECTION! PRAY FOR BLESSINGS! LET YOUR GOD PROVE THEIR POWER! LET THEIR DIVINITY BE MADE REALITY!" Her going theory and her hope is that this will interact with the intelligence networking systems in /spectacular/ ways. She's trying less to protect the physical form of this massive being, and more trying to make sure that the show of its divinity is maintained, and that the massive thing definitely won't falter in some way that leaves an impression on the machines that this is the wrong way to go. She wants them to learn, and to replicate this more!
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa will have to go over the data she got from the images later there's not much time right now to really do a big deal of study of it but she seem to agree with 4S, "Some sort of old power plant of some sort? Or a whole on nest of them? This does sound like something we should call in on Pod." She notes before and hte machines are going full on cultist now with a evne bigger one? It's also shooting. "Oh for the love of!" She does not even have time to kick in her therm optic cloak to evne get some edge in not being a target. The robots are going to become a god? She's now moving to give All-Seeing Eye some support fire as she SMG comes out and she starts opening up on the culist machines, less enemies to worry about right? She's also unaware of Pavo's antics for the moment. Would be gods tend to lead to a lot of problems and she starts moving about as she shoots staying still is asking to get blown to bits and bodies like her are not cheap, they are not cheap at all. Then she finds out about Pavo, as shje starts shouting. "PAVO WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?!" Years of living anf working with Pavo is all that likely is holing Kotone back from taking direct action.
Batou	Tachikoma was nearly knocked off the wall when the half-built being came to life! But luckily they were able to leap back out once the initial blast came through. Batou is watching this scene unfold, leaping back to avoid the beam, his gun out but not firing. "Dammit, this isn't gonna go well, Eye! Don't be hasty!" he shouts. Tachikoma is firing directly at the gems to at least incapacitate the "divine being", not kill it. Batou takes the same tactic, shooting at the gems as well, hoping to halt the assault on the elites. "Pavo! If they listen to you call them off! There's no need for this attack!"
A2	Yes, all that stuff that All-Seeing Eye had found in this creepy little munchkins' brains last times appears to have evaporated and been replaced with the stuff Pavo left out for them. With memory units that are either incredibly simple or incredibly badly damaged, they'd promptly forgotten everything up to the point mesoamerican hypertech was all over the walls and that's as good a creation myth as any. Where they actually learned to use sentences, or the abridging concepts of 'nonbelievers' and 'smiting' came from is much more up in the air. Rather, it seems to have developed out of thin air. The giant Machine is ironically most sturdy where the blocks of stone are covering it, hungrily eating up bullets like only blocks of stone can and doing little to detract from the fact that the exposed sections are literally scrap metal welded together and not the oddly durable tin cans the other Machines are made of. How they made energy cannons out of any of this is debatable, but they blow up in clouds of fuchsia and lavender fire when August hits them just right anyways. Even when Tachikoma shoots the gems, ostensibly ornamental and just to copy Pavo's look, the cannons experience massive feedback, as if the red crystals were somehow powering them. None of it is really suited for Ezekiel firing the gigatech lance when it reaches out for him, and the beam spears straight through its torchlit arm all the way up to the elbow and blows it up with far more explosive force than there could possibly actually be accounted for with the components inside of it. The surrounding Machines are much smaller, but oddly a lot sturdier, tottering and falling over as bullets and crossbow bolts pound into them by the dozens, but popping off in bizarrely intense, self-contained explosions relatively infrequently. They wind up spinning about aimlessly, running to workstations, getting shot, then running to different ones, not quite sure what to make of the situation, until A-39 cuts the construction supports (stolen i-beams from the apartments) out from what amounts to the giant Machine's midsection, and the entire floor of the room partially collapses inward, crumbling into the chamber below and sending all of the smaller robots spinning and rolling to the bottom in a big clanking pile. "I AM CHOSEN." it somehow manages to say when Mei gets to climbing all over it, slowly scraping at the rubble with one hand. "I AM REMADE IN GOD'S IMAGE." The others around its buried waste look like they're going mad, climbing all over each other like ants, yellow "wait lamp" eyes flickering asymmetrically like the lights on a router. "PRAY." they begin chanting. "PRAY. WE ARE GOING TO HEAVEN. PRAY." And the giant robot answers, on the spot. "PRAY. I WILL TAKE ALL TO HEAVEN." Of course, this is immediately followed by a suicide explosion. 4S barely has time to yell "Pod!" before 053 has a weird, semi-refractive screen of rotating symbols out in front of the party as well, joining Ezekiel to rebuff the colossal blast wave. That part isn't terrifically shocking. The impression that lingers is the moment before the Machines went off; the part where they had all synched up right at the end, eyes simultaneously flashing back to their normal red state, and making the exact same skyward pose before detonating. Even 4S has to comment when the noise dies down.
A2	"That was . . . network behaviour! Are you sure they were really like this when you found them? If their ability to reach the Machine network wasn't broken, then why weren't they connected to it? And then why would they all decide to reconnect together right at the end? This doesn't make any sense!" Pod 053 chimes in with the incredibly excited tones of a pleasantly patient help desk employee. "Individual Machine Lifeforms are not capable of making conscious decisions. There is no precedent that supports a possibility wherein the Machine Lifeforms voluntarily disengaged and reconnected to the network, therefore it is logical that the network itself is malfunctioning, or has selectively abandoned small enclaves of Machine Lifeforms for evolutionary purposes."
All-Seeing Eye	Eye charges up to the false god, a sleek black metal spike gripped in his hand. He makes it perhaps three steps closer when A-39's attack causes the chain reaction which caves in the floor. With a shrill, oscillating noise, a steel cable flies free from the Exalt's wrist, latching on to one of the wall mounted torches. Forward momentum carries him towards the wall, where, using the whip to hold himself upright, he runs across it, attempting to work his way down to the (literally) fallen god. The spike is raised in his hand--thrown, even--when it bounces off of the combined barrier from 4S and Zeke. Though the two of them undoubtedly just saved him from getting his ass blown up, he almost seems disappointed. Ziplining upwards, Eye swings over, twirling gracefully through the air to land perhaps a foot or so before Pavo. He looks her up and down, frowning with distaste, then takes a step forward. The Exalt gives her a long, hard stare, his face a beautiful, yet expressionless mask... then turns his back on her. He appears to be walking back towards the rest of the party, his gait seemingly normal. This is when he wheels around and sends a steel cable flying towards Pavo's throat, aiming to wrap it around and rob her of the ability to speak. Whether she's able to deflect the attack or not, he naturally has something to say about it. "I warned you, and you persisted. Now, why did you do that, darling? Hm?" He pushes his lower lip out in a sort of sneering pout. "Was it to test me? Did you like what you found? Or... do you want more?"
Mei Hatsume	Out of the line of fire of the energy cannonballs, Mei's next step is clambering all over the machine and trying not to get hit by the crossbow bolts and bullets smashing into it! Also, the rapid explosions. "Religious machines... This sort of thing would never happen back home, but here... Here!" The mad scientist wheels are starting to turn in Mei's head, but they're quickly slowing down as she starts to process more of this whole.. Everything. ".. Would be pretty dangerous, actually. But what's all this about getting taken to heaven now?" And then the giant machine pile explodes. Mei, unfortunately, is right on top of it when that happens, and she gets launched directly into one of those wall murals. She's not getting up anytime soon, but at least she didn't get flung into anything pointy or a sharp corner!
Kyoko Takada	Alpha-39 is backing away as soon as the floor starts to give. Since she doesn't trust the floor she's backing onto not to just give out entirely a moment later, her free hand is grabbing for her climbing gear in the same moment. It's more like 3D-maneuvering gear with how it ends up used around here, the line flying out and wrapping around part of the forge apparatus, potentially the sturdiest thing nearby, for her to skim across the floor over to as things fall, light up, and explode. She's peering down the hole, trying to find anything useful that survived--like intact bits of 13O--when All-Seeing Eye makes his move. Her expression beneath her mask is unreadable, but she'd been sure he'd do that a little later, and not in present company. Batou immediately yells after him, A-39 puts two and two and two together, and she goes right back to examining the wreckage instead of butting into that. Is there any information left at all? Failing that, anything tangentially useful? This thing's turning out to be another bust.
Starbound Flotilla	This. Yes, THIS! This is wonderful. Pavo is only loosely theorizing about what is happening, but every theory ringing around her bird cranium is one she loves. She's fascinated as they pray, as they unify, and as they... Explode. Oh, right, there's ongoing danger, and Pavo isn't near 4S or Ezekiel. "Aaaaaaagh!" Pavo cries out in pain as the explosion surges around her, searing off layers of armor and blisters flesh beneath, and is blown back by it, bouncing badly off of one of her own terrain fixtures. "Ghhhh... DAMNATION..." She struggles to shout as she struggles just as much to get to her feet. "Did it work...? No... Yes!" She looks over to 4S, rushing to him in an almost threatening level of intense eagerness. "That's it! I bet they did -- They had to! They prayed to the network! That has to be it. No, that has to be it, the main network reached neural network equilibrium and degradation density, now it's spawning and weight balancing residual learning on branches to get around its own limits!" "Cool, I sure understood all of that." George muitters, trying to clear out partially ablated armor from his EVA hardsuit. Moonfin seems to have taken even deeper cover, in a state of visible worry. "This is far too much speculation, based on far too little data and far too much reliance on the nature of simple SAIL systems." The Hylotl declares. Pavo's ranting is interrupted by All-Seeing Eye's sudden arrival in front of her, and seems ready to engage in more bantz, even while he turns. "That's right, you see? Now if I was lucky, those-- GHHHK!" She's shut up quite quickly by the steel cable lashing around her neck, slamming down to one knee as armor around her throat crushes and crunches. "Hhhh... Ghhhhkkkk..." She makes a sort of sneering avian noise at his commentary, a wordless "if you wanted an answer, you should have choked me after" sort of response as her fingers clasp around the whip. Though Moonfin moves to close in and defend her, even cut the whip, a look from Pavo stops him. Even while choking, she moves to her feet and then approaches All-Seeing eye. The superhuman strength in her weird mesomamerican armor surges in a brilliant display of yellow fire and she gets right up in his face, practically knocking her beak against his nose. Her surge of strength is enough to warp even magical materials, just enough to give her a little breathing room. Her voice takes that imperious, deluded tone again. "I'M A GOD. AND AS LONG AS YOU'RE SPREADING THIS DEATH AND HERESY, THERE'S NO KIND OF WORTH YOU CAN PROVE TO ME. THOSE MACHINES WILL KNOW THE TRUE WORTH OF DIVINITY. KILL ALL YOU WANT. SUBVERT ALL YOU WANT. YOU'RE THE ONE WHO LIVES AND BREATHES THE POWER OF A MACHINE GOD AND FORCES THEM TO BE YOUR DOMAIN. BUT YOU HAVE NO WISDOM TO TEACH THEM, NO DIVINE TRUTH TO GRANT THEM; YOU CAN TAKE THEIR LIVES, BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE THEIR SOULS." George and Moonfin stand cautiously, weapons at the ready, hoping that one of them will let this spike in tension cool down. Pavo seems to be slowly, deliberately unwinding the whip as much as she can; she's not going to start a fight with All-Seeing Eye right now, unless he falls headfirst into the rush of tension she just had to put into things.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa picks off a few of the machines Pavo has changed since she was last in the Flotilla or she's seeing something she never saw before. Either is possible and she doesn't like it she doesn't like it at all. The machine finally goes down as it goes on zealtous rant before it finally goes down. Thankfully 4S with his pod is able to bring up some kind of barrier that protects them. She still moves to protect herself with her arm out of some old lizard brain reflex she still has. then as things settle Eye opens up on Pavo, with an attack Batout calls out and she has to agree now is not the time for this. "Sir now isn't the time for this! We have a job to do sir ...." Seems seem to be settling but then Pravo rants. "Listen to your self Pavo?! What have you done to your self, you are becoming what I thought you /hated/."
August Kohler	The turrets are going down with the flames. August keeps the pressure on...but the floor starts to collapse, and August desummons his Persona so he can focus on running up to leverage, almost tripping and losing his grip before he draws his knife and uses it to slam into the ground and pull himself up. As the machine shouts about going to heaven and starts to explode, August braces, but 4S and his pod throw up a barrier, allowing the redhead to take a breath. As everything explodes at the same time, August considers what to do next, and brings his hand to his gun as All-Seeing Eye and Pavo start going at it. Instead of getting involved, though, he sends a communication to the other Watch members over his radio. <"I'm gonna see if there's anything useful here to salvage, and then we should get out of here before they get into some sort of divinity-sparked conflict."> And then, moving towards where the explosion was, August moves to see if anything at all would be valuable to take back to the Watch, whether to use or sell. Even if they can't find that corpse, he's hoping to profit in /some/ way.
Ezekiel Gravez	Returning from behind cover, Zeke has the cyberdeck ready to buff or to protect the group. The arc of light on the needle projection sizzles as the air continues to hum. The azure geometrical shields seem to dissipate as well, as if the forces powering them simply ceased. The exchange between Pavo and Eye worried him, as he listened to their exchanges. "Can someone 'splain what jus happened 'ere?" The cyberdeck was still aglow with calculations, trajectories and vectors, alogorythmic symbols depicting various super forces. The danger was likely not over, and he needed to stay alert in case of escalation.
All-Seeing Eye	Eye watches with interest as Pavo bends the whip out of shape. The protests from Batou and Kotone go ignored, and he stands rigidly, locking eyes with her without budging. "A god." He chuckles quietly, briefly rocked with a gentle paroxysm of amusement. He raises the hand from which his whip extrudes, and as Pavo unwinds the weapon, he simply retracts it into his wrist. Arms spread wide, he poses a simple question. "Where are your followers?" He tilts his head expectantly, smirking. "Your shrine?" A look of mock realization spreads across his face, and his arms draw near, one hand covering his mouth in faux horror. "Oh... they're in that crater right there... aren't they? Well, that /is/ unfortunate." He chortles indulgently, stepping past her to deface some of the more religious iconography on the wall. Looking over his shoulder at Pavo despite any need to, he smiles widely. "And here I am, defacing what's left of it. Now, we're clearly at an impasse--because from my point of view, this is /containing/ heresy, while from yours, it no doubt /is/ heresy." He heaves his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. "So what do we do? Well... my religion has five thousand years of established customs, cathedral-factories in every city large and small, and thousands of agents whose task is to combat heterodoxy wherever it arises. Moreover, who see it as nothing but death by another name. /Your/ religion on the other hand..." He rubs his thumb and index finger together with a disdainful frown, wiping the chalk stains off on the seat of his pants. "Has some rubble, some graffiti," a gesture towards Pavo, "And a lunatic with no inside voice and woeful delusions of grandeur. You are right about one thing, though!" He approaches her and playfully boops her beak. "Well... after a fashion, anyway. Hm!" He wrinkles his nose amusedly, as if sharing gossip. "I can't take their souls. Buuut, I can send them to the Psychopomp Gears, where they will be cleansed of your heresy and put to better use through reincarnation. You see, unlike the brilliant, luminous Orichalcum caste or the ever-popular Jade caste, there are really only two bits of 'wisdom' and 'divine truth' I dispense." He holds out one finger. "Heresy is chaos," he says, raising a second. "And chaos is death. Now, if you want someone to come here and weep over this disaster, to say some flowery words and consecrate their souls to a better life, there are plenty of 'heroes of the Populat' who would gladly do it. Me? Darling, I'm just the garbage man." He turns his back on Pavo with that, and expectantly whips his raised hand in a circular 'let's go' motion aimed at those Paladins who haven't left. "Ta."
Starbound Flotilla	"What I hated?" Pavo says, looking with wide eyes to Kotone. "I hated people who wielded divine right like a cudgel, classes who claimed divinity as some unassailable realm of special privilege, the people and the /things/ that lord over people without ever having taken or built or earned any of what they have. What I hated was presumption that divinity is /special/." She spreads her arms wide, battered golden armor gleaming like it's blessed. "There's nothing farther from that in what I am now. Now I can /prove/ that there's nothing special about a god. No miracle, no wisdom, no power of smiting; I'll craft just as strong an order, work just as many miracles, give just as profound wisdom, and smite just as many nonbelievers as any divinity ever could -- and so can these robots! So can something as simple as a rattling collection of wires and semiconductors." And she turns with blazing eyes back to All-Seeing Eye, wrenching the last of the whip off her neck. "No god is divine because of prayer, because of followers, because of shrines, or because of a head start. A god is divine because they have the power to make that claim." She says, casting it to one side. She hovers gently in her gleaming golden armor, and shines with bright yellow light for a moment, with her arms out and her palms up. "I am the only cathedral I need. I am the only worship I demand. I am the only hell that you need to visit for your heresy. Thus is the truth of a god." She stays as he leaves.